Accountants are enjoying a placid recession. PwC, the world’s largest accounting firm, saw its UK business grow 1 per cent to £2.25bn in the year to June. While transactional work has dried up, other business lines have boomed. Forensic accounting has grown 77 per cent over the past three years, and the firm has taken £100m alone from administering Lehman Brothers. Other large accounting firms are also expected to post results similar to last year’s. The resilience is unsurprising. The industry has shrunk from the “big eight” of the 1980s to the “big four” of today, a consolidation that has helped bean counters; PwC earned a juicy 34 per cent profit margin. Much of their work is also required by law, with taxation and audits seen as annuity businesses. Arguably, though, the most important asset accountants have maintained in this recession is their reputation.

In some ways it is surprising that the downturn has not notched up a big accounting scandal. The reasons are two-fold. First, firms and their auditors have become more conservative since the Enron and WorldCom accounting debacles. Second, Sarbanes-Oxley in the US and harmonised reporting standards elsewhere have forced greater disclosure requirements. With this has come more work for accounting firms. Indeed, strong recruiting has continued through the downturn.